360 and aspect ratio of wmvs

[jubilex]

I know others have pointed out that the 360 incorrectly displays some hdtv content (I think it was 1440 x 1080 transport streams).

I'm not sure I've seen anyone address the other aspect ratio issue with the 360. I have been encoding my hdtv caps to WMV and of course cropping out any letterboxing, ending up with 1280 x 544 or thereabouts.

The 360, for some reason, further squishes these vertically on playback. Not by a huge amount, and apparently not even noticeably to most people, but I notice and it bugs me. Comparing the cropped encode with the original letterboxed source on the 360, and the picture area is narrower in height by (to me) a noticeable amount. This also throws off the masking I use when watching 'scope movies via projector.

[jubilex]

This doesn't bother anybody else?

If I play a letterboxed 1280x720 or 1920x1080 movie, it's fine. But obviously when I encode to wmv I want to crop the black bars. So I end up with 1280 x 544 for a 2.35:1 film.

On the 360, these play back at 2.48:1 or thereabouts (I'm measuring on the screen so can't be totally precise). What possible explanation is there for this?

I tried using Crypto's WMV aspect ratio changer app to compensate for the 360's bizarre AR error, but while it changes the AR when played on the PC, the 360 playback is unaffected. Which is actually kind of odd, because I've done other encodes from 1280x1080 hdtv caps and set the PAR (in WME) as 15:10, and they played back correctly on the 360.

I don't see anything in the spring update that addresses this. It drives me crazy and is yet another frustrating thing about the 360 as a media center (and yet another thing that the user-created XBMC on Xbox had zero problems with; not only does that play everything back correctly, but if it doesn't, you can manually adjust the DAR until it does). Not properly supporting MS's own format, when that format is pretty much all that MS allows us to use = grrr.

[HowlerX]

This looks to be fixed in the upcoming update.

[jubilex]

I hope so. All that I saw in the listed features about aspect ratio was the ability to switch between zoom, native, letterboxed, etc -- which is somewhat odd to me because as far as I can tell I can already do that. Unless they are talking only about the clumsy dash player and not the 360 media center.

And I know there was another bug about 1440 x 1080 stuff playing back as 4:3 instead of being stretched to 16:9 (or maybe it was vice versa), but I think that's also a separate issue.

Anyway, fingers crossed...

[jubilex]

So I finally found out why no one else seems to complain about this -- the dashboard player plays movies correctly.

So let's compare the two players:

360 Media Center (what everyone was forced to use for the first half of the 360's life):

- incorrect aspect ratio for cropped wmvs (1280 x 544 plays back at 2.42:1 rather than 2.35:1)

- FF only goes at 3x, and if you use the skip button instead and push it too quickly or hold it down an instant too long, it skips straight to the end of the film and you have to start all over

- will apparently (?) not be getting the h264 support

Dashboard player:

- will not play .ts files, unlike the Media Center (they don't even show up)

- no organization/folders -- all shared movies in one long, messy list

- doesn't honor aspect ratio flags (I have some hdtv caps that were 1280 x 1080 that I converted to 1280x1080 wmvs with an AR of 15:10 -- these play back correctly in the Media Center, but not in the dash) -- I think this is getting fixed in the update

So basically, we have two players that are crippled in different ways implemented on the same machine, so have to switch between the two of them to play different things